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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28872192">the child unloved</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromicat/pseuds/Andromicat'>Andromicat</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Character Study, Floris | Fundy-centric, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, No Fluff, Sad, TOO MUCH, and get therapy, angsty, as puffy said help him out, but not completely hopeless, have fun, he’s somehow getting worse, highkey depressing, hopeless, i think i should stop here, maybe i should quit writing and go into poetry, mmm contemplation, more drama, more pointless figurative language, more pointless symbolism, more redundancy, not really - Freeform, please, please fox boy just wants a friend, slight h/c, the tags are starting to derail, things that will never happen, what did you expect from me tbh, who doesn’t leave him after two weeks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:48:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,043</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28872192</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromicat/pseuds/Andromicat</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Because the ghosts of them still leave phantom footprints across the surface of his heart. Featherlight and sure, they push against his broken soul unhealed. It builds, the sting collects until it is a rain of daggers piercing his psyche until it bleeds and bleeds, until there’s none of him left.</p><p>He cries out for someone, anyone, but there is no response. Nobody will ever come for him, not ever again, when he can only fail them. It’s far too late for that.</p><p>No, they’ve all left him drowning in the darkness.</p><p>No one is there to pull him out.</p><p>(A study on Fundy.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>None</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the child unloved</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>or: lmao fundy you’re fucking alone</p><p>slight tw//abandonment, lack of self preservation</p><p>tfw you read too many fundy character analyses and write a whole ass 2k word long essay on his character. no regrets. would do it again. 1,000 times<br/>*turns on projector* ALRIGHT MFS LET’S GET TO IT!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“My little champion,” his father once said. He, who once stood high before them all, led them unafraid with a voice that rang with clarity and the music of freedom and so much hope. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then his face warps. His bright facade crumbles, darkens, broken pieces on the floor. A shattered consciousness picks itself back up, folds back together into a neat whole, but it’s wrong. It’s all wrong, so wrong. His motions are robotic, almost, but frighteningly broken, imperfect, nearly human but miles from humanity. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He still stands above him, in that dim ravine, a careless, crumbling shell of a leader. He holds the product of weeks of espionage in a single dangling hand, nonchalantly, his eyes dull, flickering from his desperate gaze </span>
  <em>
    <span>uncaring.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re my son,” he says, as if considering something already decided. He stares down at the book, a single, crumpled page held delicately between forefinger and thumb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s unconvinced. He’d known it wouldn’t work, but for some desperate, hopeless reason, he’d tried anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Why does he do it still?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The man stands ghostlike, fluttering at the edge of a precipice. The diary sails from his outstretched hand, pages scattering on worn stone below. Ink blurs and smears against the rock, the spine cracking, paper crumpling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I despise you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m proud of you,” the king said long ago, standing on that ridge by his side. Adjusting his crown, he looks to him, cracking a smile as he tells him his dreams, their future together. Hope blooms in his chest, a subtle flicker of warmth licking in his heart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Days later he stands unsteadily on the docks, the sickening tang of ocean salt whirling against his face as he falls, his fishing rod clattering to the floor. The familiar, sinking trepidation pulls him down. Tears prick at the corners of his vision, but he closes his eyes, wraps his arms around himself, lets the deafening quiet cloak him— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A subtle rustle, barely loud enough to hear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turns, the stony weight lifting from his chest. A wilting tendril of desperation pulls around him, a drowning child reaching for his last refuge, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please, please, let it be him, please— </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>There is no familiar silhouette of a crowned man in the distance. No, it’s just him and his grandfather, but he’s reaching a hand out, asking if he’s okay—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not enough, no, it’s all too much. It’s all gone again. They’ve forgotten him, because he means nothing to them, nothing, nothing, he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The wilted petals of his belief spiral to the ground.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I still love you, grandpa!” he shouts, his voice quick and shaky, lilting as if it were meant a joke (it wasn’t. Not at all). Deep within, a chill of terror grasps at his chest. He’s been here before. A betrayal, however he wished they’d perceive him. Not again. Not again. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Not again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>The winged man regards him slowly, the warmth draining from his blue eyes until they stare through him icy, cold, unfeeling. A smile dances along the edges of his lips, a thrilling irony, a cutting regret. The frigid, bitter blade sweeps across his chest, again and again and again, until all he can feel is the devastating cold of ice creeping around his heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re fucking dead to me,” he laughs, turning away. The chill of terror strikes him at the wrong moment, and he almost falls, almost snaps under the pressure. But the others are watching him, they’re laughing, they’re laughing and he must join in. It’s fine, it’s fine. It shouldn’t affect him. At least not anymore. He shouldn’t take this seriously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s all just a joke, right? A joke. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pushes away the frightening cold gathering like storm clouds in his chest. He breaks apart the frost forming cold flowers in his mind, pushes back the cry that threatens to break past his throat and pour into the heavens.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The winged man leaves, and he never turns back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You are sad,” he spits with a ferocity he never knew he had. It’s all coming apart, in his head, in his heart, and the last threads are fraying. The voice in his head that screamed with a sickly, feeble hope distorts and fades like static. His last anchor, his last hope, falling to pieces and scattering to the wind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Coasting on the edge of no return, but he finds he can no longer afford to care. Not when </span>
  <em>
    <span>they all</span>
  </em>
  <span> didn’t. It wasn’t worth it anymore, to hold it all together, when nothing he did could keep it all from fracturing like glass, again, and again, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” the half-enderman responds, his voice breaking, but his words blur in the frenzied storm of his mind. He says something, he says something, they’re screaming amid the thunder and flashes of white lightning and pouring rain, but it all warps and mumbles and he hears none of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing matters anymore when all he can see is the back of his head as he storms away…or is he the one who is walking away? He can’t remember, he can’t tell anymore. His thoughts scrambled, his vision blurred, the final thread snapping with a jarring, crazed finality.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He left him, just as they always do, just as they always will.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No, this won’t happen again,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he told himself in that moment, soaked to the bone and freezing in the downpour of his unbound frenzy. He snarls, a fist clenching at his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This is the last time.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(For a long time, he doesn’t admit to himself that when the storm finally broke, he’d cried and cried and cried.)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Their words, their trailing footprints leading away from him, sting like tiny shards of glass. They dig into his soul and at first he can close his eyes and </span>
  <em>
    <span>pretend</span>
  </em>
  <span> nothing is wrong, because it’s so normal to him, to watch people turn around and walk away as if he is nothing. Perhaps he </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span> nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s habit for him to watch their backs fade into the trees, never to return. From the moment he meets them he expects it. He tells himself to move away, to distance himself from them all, but he can’t. He draws them close like a pleading child and they inevitably recede, because he’s never good enough, because he does everything wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, he tells himself, no. Expect it, and it won’t hurt anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It won’t hurt. It won’t hurt. It won’t hurt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No matter how many times they leave it still does.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because the ghosts of them still leave phantom footprints across the surface of his heart. Featherlight and sure, they push against his broken soul unhealed. It builds, the sting collects until it is a rain of daggers piercing his psyche until it bleeds and bleeds, until there’s none of him left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cries out for someone, anyone, but there is no response. Nobody will ever come for him, not ever again, when he can only fail them. It’s far too late for that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, they’ve all left him drowning in the darkness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one is there to pull him out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How ironic, he thought, that with all this time spent on forging his own self, he went down the same path as they all did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The child unembraced. The child unloved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cast to the side while they all rushed ahead to fame and to glory.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pushed away while they all fell apart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For all he has done he is worth nothing to them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just a tool. Just a little game to play, an entertainment. His work, his kindness, his contributions go unnoticed, because he is an accessory. He tries so hard to bring them joy, to make them smile, but it is all for naught, for he is never as important to them as he wishes to be. They smile, but their faces are ephemeral in his memory, washed away so quickly in the torrent of chaos that is their world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Always secondary, an afterthought. Useful, then not. Inevitably, he disappoints them, they find something better, and he is thrown away like a broken toy. They move on, but he can’t. He never could. Just as defective as he’d always been with his childlike desperation, mind still trapped in the past, never moving on. Not as they all do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. If he meant nothing to them, as much as he tried to mean </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>, then he will take the other path. Walk willingly into the darkness, turn from the deceitful light that has never ever given him </span>
  <em>
    <span>connection</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not once. Has never given him what it gave to everyone else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone who loved him, who supported him, who led him through the dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone who wouldn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>leave</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they all did. No matter what he did. No matter what he tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So if he can’t make them smile, he will make them cry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once a bright-eyed child with unencumbered hope, following in the footsteps of his father with naive faith, he stands a broken man, faithless, yet deeply determined, in the gaping, crumbling canyon that once was the country he gave his life for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks beyond the fallen stone, the rubble, the broken remains of houses and platforms and chests and shelves. In the falling dust, in the piles of stone and wood, are the fragments of </span>
  <em>
    <span>memories</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Memories with all he has lost, all who have lost him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet the longer he stands here, the longer he watches the dust settle, the less it matters. It’s gone, has been gone for weeks and weeks. Besides, beyond the rubble is cresting light. The sun, a new day, a new dawn. There is a turning dial and the music reaches a crescendo, approaches a triumphant end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All he has done is hurt. All they have done is leave. His presence is a burden, he’s a gear in the turning machine of violence, the looping reality of this world. Pull away, turn against the system, and it will all come apart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He will break the cycle that has tormented them as long as they have lived, no matter the cost. Even if it means losing himself, his sacrifice is the only option he has left if he truly wishes to make a mark. It’s the only good he can do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>he can do. His last hope, his last chance to bring them joy instead of driving them all apart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe, when they all come together again and he is lost to the shadows, they can all smile again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then maybe there will be peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Why does he still hope? Why does he still believe, even when his own dreams have fallen like ashes to the ground?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He falls to his knees like a limp rag doll, his trembling body giving way.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s because this is all he has left in him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s all coming down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Soon it will all be over.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>~bonus</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Footsteps echo against distant stone. A voice, too faint to recognize, flows across rock like water, drifting past his ears as if in a dream, faintly familiar. His head snaps up, instinctively, his weary hand reaching for his sword, when he flinches.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s something in the way they speak. The way the sounds flow together and form a whole. It repeats, echoes, echoes, and strangely, it beckons to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Is it his name they are calling?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Who is here? Who has come for him? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Isn’t he alone—he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>supposed</span>
  </em>
  <span> to be alone. Hadn’t they all </span>
  <em>
    <span>left</span>
  </em>
  <span>— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No. He can’t have hope now. It’s all over and his end is all planned out. He is tetherless, unrestrained, without someone to hold him down, tell him that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>matters</span>
  </em>
  <span> because no, no, no, he doesn’t, he shouldn’t anymore—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The figure darts closer, down the piles of rock and earth. Their silhouette is somehow familiar, hauntingly nostalgic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The grayness, the clouds of dust—they all settle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their gaze meets his, an unarmed hand reaching out to him. Unconsciously his sword drops to the floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>For once he knows that someone is happy to see him. Because a brilliant, </span>
  <em>
    <span>blinding</span>
  </em>
  <span> smile erupts on their face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fundy.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>no comment on the ending, who is it ? who knows, man<br/>i guess i wanted to end it on a not absolutely terrible note, because damn this fic is depressing<br/>gotta have some hope sometimes, yanno, even when stupid fox boy doesn’t<br/>hopefully someone joins the smp and provides him with…actual support…maybe sends him to therapy…<b>get him therapy right now fuck villain and insanity arcs what about THERAPY ARCS</b> </p><p>the people who leave him, in order of appearance:<br/>wilbur<br/>eret<br/>philza<br/>ranboo<br/>i wanted to do schlatt and/or niki, but i wasn’t too sure on how to incorporate them. also i’m lazy.</p><p>also please remember that (almost) everyone on the smp has gray morality/are hypocritical in some way and (almost) everyone has a valid viewpoint to some extent. and i am in no way pushing to blame solely on certain people. this fic is a character study on fundy’s motives, not an assertion that he is in the right and everyone else is in the wrong.</p><p>thanks to my betas, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBeer42/">GingerBeer42</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/crattypatty/">crattypatty</a>. thanks for making my writing sound less dumb. couldn’t do it without you. no really though<br/>and a special thanks to dream smp tumblr, the one with the brain cells, for providing a lot of insight. y’all are smart. </p><p>if you liked it feel free to leave a kudo c: and leave a comment too, i love responding to those (please don’t try to start an argument though)<br/>if you wanna hear from me or something, follow me on twitter @fundy_apologist (damn the username checks out). my tumblr is @andromicat. </p><p>yeah</p></blockquote></div></div>
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